


If I Could Change The Way You See Yourself

by TheWalkingGrimes



Series: Tales of District Four [10]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex, in spite of the title it's not that angsty, subtle PTSD mentions, this one is actually sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: Annie stays up while Finnick dreams, and has a quiet realization.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Series: Tales of District Four [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018845
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	If I Could Change The Way You See Yourself

They’re laying in bed, curled and tangled around each other so tightly that Annie isn’t sure where Finnick ends and she begins. At some point she started timing her breathing to Finnick’s, the slow rising and falling of his chest that she’s halfway sprawled across. 

It’s been several months since they started sleeping together yet this is the first time Finnick has actually fallen  _ asleep  _ right after. They’d been up late, helping Mags repair the damage to her home from a winter storm, and when they’d finally stumbled into bed Annie had expected for them both to pass out within minutes. 

Then, Finnick and his wandering hands had other ideas, which Annie had been more than happy to indulge. She’d been so tired and relaxed that she nearly drifted right off to sleep herself after he’d brought her to completion - when she finally collected herself and brought her attention back to Finnick, determined to reciprocate in spite of her fatigue, he was already snoring softly.

Now, she traces her pinky over his cheekbones, his nose, smoothing the tiny crease between his eyebrows. He’s truly lost to sleep, because he doesn’t wrinkle his nose like she’s tickling him and he needs to sneeze. 

Annie wonders how many people have seen him like this. She thinks the answer is probably ‘very few’ - Finnick typically doesn’t sleep after they have sex. It’s often a morning thing, and then he’ll jump into the shower or go for a run, a guilty look on his face as he kisses her forehead - an apology before he abandons her.

_ (He’s never explained it to her and she’ll never ask him to - she doesn’t need him to _ .

_ She knows him. _ )

At the moment, he’s totally at peace.  Annie swallows a lump in her throat, smooths some of the hair away from his forehead. 

“I love you.”

The words, whispered and near silent, thunder through the room like a canon in the arena. Terrifying in their enormity.

Finnick’s breathing remains relaxed and steady. Emboldened, Annie wets her lips, tests out the words again.

“I love you.” 

She expects the shift to feel more monumental, a crashing flood that overwhelms her and carries her off in a merciless current. 

Instead, it washes over her slowly, calm and soothing like the tides. Of course she loves him.  _ Of course.  _ It’s inconceivable, ridiculous to imagine a reality where she doesn’t.

_ Does he know that? _

It hits her, a harsh blow to the chest that nearly winds her. Annie loves him, but Finnick doesn’t know. 

Or does he? Has he read it in the way her eyes never leave him, no matter what is happening or who else is in the room? Does he feel it in her touch, taste it on her lips? Hear it in her laughter as she teases him and keeps him grounded? Can he sense it in the gravitational pull that draws them together, magnets that should never be torn apart?

The uncertainty is devastating - not even of the possibility of him not loving her back, but that he may not realize the depths of her feelings for him.

Finnick’s (their) heart beats against her cheek. Horrifying in its fragility. Just one of many organs in his body necessary to keep him alive. It would be so easy for it to stop. Annie knows. She knows better than almost anyone, how easy it is for a heart to stop beating. What an ordeal it is to continue living, the constant fight. 

Laying here like this, paralyzed with the fear of how little it would take for Finnick’s heart to stop pumping blood through his veins, it’s impossible to believe she had once watched him nearly die on a shining screen and felt comparatively nothing. Just another ill-fated Tribute, a cocky Career who volunteered too young and got in over his head. 

That’s what everyone said for the first week, especially her brother. Trisha Iodian, who lived in their neighborhood, a proper full Career, now she was a potential Victor. Everyone was rooting for her.  Up until she was caught tangled in a net and gutted with a trident. Placing fourth. “A good showing,” Claudius Templesmith praised, and then quickly forgot her in favor of the boy who had proved he was, in fact,  _ not _ in over his head.

Sometimes, when he’s caught in the middle of a nightmare, Finnick mumbles Trisha’s name.

There’s no nightmares tonight, and even though Annie can feel her own heart racing with anxiety, thoughts of  _ I have to tell him I have to tell him before it’s too late,  _ she cannot bear to wake him from what must be a beautiful dream from the way his lips keep twitching into a smile.

Still, Annie can’t sleep, mind fixated on her mission. So she stays awake, keeping guard as if they’re back in the arena (a  _ revolting  _ thought, being in the arena with Finnick, and one of the most recurring themes of her own nightmares), watching his back so that he can sleep through the night and she can be certain nothing will harm him.

When tendrils of light begin peeking through the blinds, falling in streaks across them and turning his hair golden, Annie finally dares to press a soft kiss at his temples, her cheek barely grazing against his eyelashes.

Finnick wakes slowly, blinking in confusion, and she waits for him to retreat into himself. For his shoulders to tense, a tight smile to adorn his face like armor against the world. He’ll make some quip, drop a quick kiss on her head, and beat a hasty retreat. 

She waits for that trapped, skittish look that she’s become all too familiar with, and prepares to draw back, prove to him that he’s nothing but free with her.

It doesn’t come.

His eyes fix on her and he smiles. It’s nothing like the dazzling smirk he flashes for the cameras, or even his sneaky grin when he’s at home and in the midst of some mischief. 

This smile is small, and uncalculated, and Annie has only ever seen him give it to her.

“I love you.” Annie tells him, unable to wait any longer.

She doesn’t tell him because she expects a response. She doesn’t expect or demand anything from him.

She tells him because she needs him to know. 

She doesn’t expect anything from him and she doesn’t have to. Finnick always exceeds her whatever her expectations could possibly be, so it’s foolish to have them in the first place.

A tension Annie hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying drops from his face, and Finnick pulls her close to him, pressing scattered, desperate kisses onto her face: her nose, her cheekbones, the corner of her lips, every centimeter he can reach.

_ “I love you, I love you, I love you,”  _ Finnick says, over and over again between kisses. As if he’s been keeping those words bottled in his mind for ages and is just now finally allowed to let them escape past his lips. 

And Annie laughs, elated, marvelling that something so heavy and tremendous can make her feel so light. 

“I think I love you more, since I said it first,” she teases him when he finally pauses enough to let her catch her breath.

Finnick shakes his head, pulling her so closely to him that Annie’s certain he’s trying to merge them into one person. “Not possible.” He whispers, voice trembling as he breathes into the bare skin of her shoulder. “That can’t be possible. Nobody can just go around feeling _more_ than what I do for you. It would be too much.”

“It is,” Annie agrees, kissing his neck. “But I can handle it.”

He mumbles something that’s almost indecipherable. Annie  _ knows  _ him though, can read him better than the tides, almost anticipates the words before he says them.

“... don’t deserve you.”

“Yes you do.” Her fingers press lightly into his back, tracing whirling patterns like waves. “We deserve each other. We deserve something good.”

His breath hitches and she feels his nose press into her collarbone. “Are you going to stay?”

It should be odd, him asking that question when he’s the one who always leaves. 

It’s not. Annie knows him.

“Of course.” She tells him, and he exhales deeply into her skin, sinking into her embrace. No longer holding himself back, giving her every piece of him. 

* * *

  
  


They fall asleep in each other’s arms every single night. On nights after they make love, Finnick holds her especially close after, so tightly Annie thinks he must be afraid she’ll be wrenched away from him if he lets up even a little. 

Finnick never leaves again.


End file.
